Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is presenting “Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron. Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food” a symposium on policy, land-use and other legal issues connected to urban agriculture and the local food movement.

As the movement towards local food continues to grow, cities are finding that they must develop law and policies to allow for and regulate agricultural practices within urban communities. Many cities are implementing policies to increase urban food production through regulation, incentives, and more comprehensive land-use and public-health policies. Cities are doing so because they recognize that increasing agricultural land use can be a good answer to declining populations and an excess of abandoned or foreclosed properties. Cities are also recognizing that increasing access to local food can provide economic and public health benefits. And, regions are realizing that increasing the connections between rural farmers and urban consumers can provide a synergistic relationship with economic benefits to the farmer, health benefits to the consumer, ecological benefits to the environment, and a more sustainable and secure food sources for the community.

This symposium will first discuss why local food benefits the community, and then will elucidate the laws and policies that Cleveland and other cities have implemented to increase local food production and access to local food. It will also address some of the benefits and challenges of implementing these policies. Finally, it will address the need to strengthen the urban, suburban, and rural food connection to move towards more sustainable and reliable local food production.

As part of the symposium, we will also have a lunch meeting where a smaller group, including the speakers and others who have a vested interest in the area of urban agricultural policy, can talk more freely about how other Cities can benefit from Cleveland’s success, and how Cleveland can learn from what other cities have done.